Called Friends--February 1, 2024

Called Friends--February 1, 2024

[Jesus said:] "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servant any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name." [John 15:12-16]

There is a critical difference between one's "family" and one's "friends"--you're stuck with your family, at least at some level, but friends are chosen.

Of course, that cuts both ways.  Sometimes it's comforting to know that even if your friends all desert you, your family is bound to you unchangeably, no matter how many years or miles are between you.  Like Robert Frost once said about the place called home, family is that group of people who, "when you have to go there, they have to take you in."  And yet, that also means that there is something especially precious about a friendship, because it isn't a compulsory relationship. It is chosen.  So if someone chooses to call you their friend, you are being given a truly special gift--one the other person doesn't "have to" give.  Family may have to take you in, no matter how long you've been the prodigal in the far country with the pigs, but a friend makes the choice to open the door to you.

How amazing a thing it is, then, that Jesus calls his disciples "friends" on his last night with them.  To be sure, Christians are told that we are "children of God" who belong to the "household of faith."  And that is family talk.  So, yes, there is a sense in which our relationship to God is as unbreakable and unconditional as the bonds of love that hold a family together.  But it is worth noting that Jesus also makes the point of telling his disciples that he now regards them as "friends," beyond the role of servant to a master or student to a teacher.  Jesus calls them friends, which means he has chosen to build and keep that relationship, not that someone else is forcing him to take them in.  Jesus has chosen us to be his friends.

Just let that sink in for a moment! Sometimes we can get so focused on worshiping Jesus as God-incarnate, or offering praise to Jesus for bearing our sins, or trying to learn from Jesus as our Lord and Teacher, that we forget we are called to be Jesus' friends, as well.  Friends learn to care about one another's interests, passions, needs, and thoughts.  Friends grow to love the others who are important to the friend--the rest of their circle of relationship.  Friends eventually come to rub off on each other: some of my personality, quirks, and mannerisms become yours, and some of yours become mine, when you are my friend.  You come to share perspectives, even while you can honor and understand places where you don't yet see eye to eye. And in a sense, every day brings the decision all over again, whether to renew this friendship or let it wither. So every day you find yourself in a friendship that has carried over from the day before, know that you are being chosen, over and over.  Someone is saying "Yes" to you with each new day.  And--wondrously--Jesus has chosen you and me that way. He has called us "friends."

Of course, in some ways, friendship with Jesus is more difficult than friendship with a co-worker or former classmate... and in some ways it is far easier.  On the one hand, you know Jesus' friendship with you isn't really about Jesus wanting to be seen with the "cool kids" or to get to use your stuff, the way sometimes as children we might have had friends who just liked our toys, video games, skateboard, or popularity.  Jesus isn't using us and calling it "friendship."  And Jesus has a way of being a great deal more forgiving about our failures as his friends than just about anyone else I've ever met--Jesus does, after all, include Simon Peter in this conversation from John's Gospel, and before the night was out ol' Pete would deny even knowing Jesus three times! 

But on the other hand, the kind of life Jesus calls us to share with him in friendship is a lifelong challenge.  You might have a friend who's really into sports who wants you to learn to play tennis or golf with them, but Jesus calls us into a life of caring for the least, the lost, and the left behind.  Jesus calls us as his friends to learn how to love enemies, to share our bread, and to cross boundaries to include outsiders.  Those are a good deal more difficult than learning the rules to pickle ball.

So in a sense, recognizing we are called friends of Jesus both stretches us beyond our comfort zones and also relieves the stress and worry of being accepted. As Dallas Willard put it in The Divine Conspiracy, "Jesus tells us we have no need to be anxious, for there is a divine life, the true home of the soul, that we can enter simply by placing our confidence in him: becoming his friend, and conspiring with him to subvert evil with good."  What a beautiful and strange coalescence to be Jesus' friends--we find ourselves freed from worry and comfortingly embraced by Jesus' love, and at the same time he dares us to join his revolution of goodness over against a world full of mean. We are simultaneously companions with Jesus, who graciously shares our journey with us, and also comrades of Jesus, who boldly go at his side into the world's pain, suffering, and rottenness as his agents of grace. He has called us to both by calling us "friends."

What difference might it make in this day ahead to see ourselves as Jesus' friends like that?  How might we find comfort and assurance to know that Jesus keeps on choosing to be in relationship with us (and not merely that someone has "guilted" him into it in the name of "family"!)? And how might we also be challenged by Jesus to go with him, as the line goes, "once more unto the breach," staring down evil and answering it with good, bearing the hatred of others and answer it with love, confronting the crookedness of the world and responding with justice?

That's the invitation on this day.  It is all possible, because Jesus has chosen to call us "friends."

Lord Jesus, as you have called us to be your friends, let us own that relationship, and all that comes with it.